Airbnb communication analysis

For this project, I suggest relying on two theories from the course: the Elaboration Likelihood Model and the critical theory of the public sphere associated with Habermas. This choice is not accidental. In the course recap, ELM is presented as a model that distinguishes between the central route and the peripheral route of persuasion. When the audience is motivated and involved, strong arguments and substantive message processing are more effective. When involvement is lower, greater importance is given to cues such as attractiveness, status, emotionality, simplicity, and repetition.

For Airbnb, this is especially relevant because the platform journey is not uniform in terms of involvement. Scrolling through the homepage, encountering a celebrity experience, reading a news story about the Hannah Montana house, or looking at an attractive visual are situations in which the brand can benefit from peripheral cues. But when a user chooses a specific property, assesses cancellation risk, reads ratings, checks accessibility features, or compares options for a family trip, they move into a higher-elaboration mode. In this mode, central cues become critical: facts, evidence, functions, guarantees, reviews, and the structured logic of the interface. In this sense, Airbnb’s architecture itself can be read through ELM.

The second theory is necessary so that the research does not reduce Airbnb’s communication to the «effectiveness of beautiful advertising.» The critical theory part of the course reminds us that, for Habermas, the public sphere in its normative sense is connected with rational-critical discussion. However, in contemporary media, the public sphere is often transformed into a space where commercial and media forces displace deliberative logic, turning the public arena into a mode of attention management and legitimation through advertising and media forms.

Airbnb’s target audience is much broader than simply «tourists.» Based on official materials, at least four core audience segments can be identified. These are guests, who need a flexible alternative to hotel stays; hosts, for whom Airbnb is both an income channel and hosting infrastructure; experience and service hosts, who sell guided activities and offline services; and a broader network of external stakeholders, including neighbors, local communities, civil rights groups, regulators, event partners, and media.

Airbnb’s competitive field is heterogeneous. At the level of user choice, Google Play displays similar travel services next to Airbnb, including Booking.com, trivago, and Tripadvisor. Business press covering the travel sector regularly compares Airbnb with Expedia Group and, within the broader OTA space, with Booking Holdings. At the same time, since the 2026 summer release, Airbnb has begun integrating boutique and independent hotels into its own funnel. This means that it partly competes with the traditional hotel OTA market while also integrating it into its platform logic

However, Airbnb’s market position is both strong and vulnerable. On the one hand, Reuters reported that in 2025 bookings in «expansion markets» grew faster than in core markets, supported by regional customization, local payment options, and localized marketing campaigns. On the other hand, public criticism of short-term rentals has not disappeared. Spain, for example, fined Airbnb for unlicensed tourist properties, while the European discussion around overtourism continues to question the platform’s broader social legitimacy. For the presentation, this is important because Airbnb should be shown not only as a «successful brand», but also as a brand that constantly communicates under the pressure of complex public criticism

Airbnb’s communication system can most usefully be mapped as an owned, shared, earned, and partnership-driven field. At the level of owned media, the key nodes include the homepage, app surfaces, Help Center, AirCover pages, accessibility and anti-discrimination policy pages, Neighborhood Support, host-acquisition flows, Community Center, Newsroom, and Investor Relations.

At the same time, the public and social dimension of the brand remains less stable. Airbnb clearly tries to present itself as a responsible platform actor through anti-discrimination initiatives, Project Lighthouse, Neighborhood Support, Airbnb.org, and host forums. However, external criticism shows that public legitimacy cannot be fully produced through owned media alone. When national and municipal authorities discuss licensing, housing pressure, and overtourism, the brand can no longer rely only on the language of design, stories, and convenience. In this area, Airbnb needs more transparent, regularly updated, and genuinely public argumentation

The brand should also make its public communication less closed and frame it more as deliberation, rather than only as corporate statement-making. In practice, this could take the form of city-by-city dashboards showing how many listings are legally available, how much tax has been remitted, how many neighbor complaints have been resolved, what the share of whole-home versus room listings is, what response times are, and which anti-discrimination and accessibility measures are actually working. Airbnb already has important policy pages, but they mostly narrate responsibility. The next step should be institutionalized transparency. This directly corresponds to the logic of the public sphere.